She peered closer at her reflection,
wondering if one could tell by the shadowy eyes or the
passion-swollen lips that she was any different that morning than
the day before. Was there a mark somewhere on her for everyone to
see, like Cain’s, that Nick had made her his?
Exactly forty-five minutes later she
arrived in the parking lot of The Bull Ring, a Mexican restaurant
within walking distance of the state’s circular capitol.
Inside, the restaurant was crowded,
mostly with politicians. Loud shouts of greeting were traded back
and forth when recognized lobbyists and legislators came in,
accompanied by handshaking and backslapping. It was a lively place,
especially during the noon hour.
Julie recognized Pam at a corner
table, but it was not until she had made her way there that she
realized someone was with Pam.
“Hi, Julie!” Pam called. “My boss has
offered to buy my lunch,” she said, indicating Jim sitting across
from her, “and I couldn’t pass it up.”
Julie took a seat between Jim and her
friend. “Hello, Jim,” she said lightly. “Are you out gathering
secret political info for a big scoop?”
“This would be the place to get the
latest news,” he said with a genuine smile, “but Pam conned me into
buying the lunches.” He winked at Julie and added, “She claims it’s
National Secretary Week.”
Pam grimaced at her boss, but before
she could make a retort, a waiter came to take their order. For
once, Julie, shaken by the events of the night before and then
Sheila’s visit that morning, ordered a drink, a margar ita, along
with Pam and Jim.
For a while the three made only small
talk about the office gossip, the new ski facilities at Angel Fire,
the discovery of helium on one of the nearby Indian
reservations.
“So how’s marriage going?” Pam asked
as they finished the last of the nachos and another round of
margaritas.
She bit into the crunchy tortilla
topped with melted cheese and chopped jalapenos. Her eyes watered,
but not from the spicy-hot chili pepper. Why not tell them? she
asked herself. These two were her friends. “I’m afraid it’s over
before it’s begun,” she said, swallowing the lump in her throat. If
she stayed with Rafe, she knew she would only be a liability in his
senate race.
Pam’s hazel eyes widened, making her
usually bright freckles pale in comparison. “Oh, Julie, everyone
has those little lovers’ tiffs,” she said, trying to console her
friend.
Julie closed her eyes against the room
that had started to shift. She really should not have drunk a
second margarita. When she opened them, Jim was looking at her with
concern. He laid his hand over hers. “Is there anything I can do,
Julie?”
She looked up at his kind face, but
her gaze went past him to see the tall, dark man standing in the
arched doorway. Nick’s harsh gaze raked over Julie and Jim with
contempt before he turned on his heel and left.
She wanted to jump up and run after
him.
For in that split second she knew she
was in love with Nicholas Raffer. She did not know when she had
first begun to be or how or why. She just knew that her heart
belonged irrevo¬cably to Nick.
And now she could only guess what he
must think of her, sitting at the table with Jim holding her hand.
Even if he had noticed Pam with them, the least his nimble brain
could conclude was that she was preparing to write the scathing
articles about him that she had threatened to do.
“Julie, is there anything I can do?”
Jim repeated now, with serious worry at the tortured expression she
wore.
She shook her head as though trying to
shake Nick from her mind . . . and knew that was something she
would never really be able to do. He had left the imprint of his
personality and his possession of her on her mind as surely as if
he had burned his name into her heart with a branding
iron.
“No, Jim, I appreciate your offer, but
there’s nothing you can do. I’m sure—” She took a deep breath to
hold back the tears that were welling inside. “I’m sure that
everything will work out for the best.”
“How about coming by after lunch and
seeing the rest of the gang at the office?” Pam suggested with a
lightness in her voice that none of the three really
felt.
“No—I guess I better get on back
home,” she temporized. “There’s a lot I have to catch up
on.”
But she did not drive straight home.
She drove aimlessly out along the winding Cerro Gordo road. Before
she realized it, she found she was on the narrow Highway 64 that
was jammed with other cars bound for the Pueblo Indian reservations
that rimmed Santa Fe, for at that time of year many families spent
their winter vacations in Santa Fe, skiing and
sightseeing.
She pulled over into the paved area
designated for parking, but she remained sitting in her car,
watching the tourists as they flocked to photograph the Tesuque
kiva, the round ceremonial structure of sandstone that was partly
underground, or purchase pottery and paintings displayed on
colorful blankets about the plaza. Not too far away a father posed
his wife and three children with an old Indian woman dressed in the
native costume of velveteen blouse over a calico skirt while he
snapped pictures, and she felt the deep yearning gnawing in her to
be part of a family like that—to have a husband to laugh with and
children to love.
Was there any chance for her and Nick
to have such a family?
She sat behind the wheel, trying to
think clearly, logically. The war that raged between her heart and
her brain did not make it easy for her. Her brain reminded her that
Nick would never love any woman. Had he not told her as much . . .
that the dissolution of his parents’ marriage had hardened him
against marriage? Her heart whispered that with time she might be
able to make him love her.
She did know that if she were to ask
her parents what to do, they would tell her to listen to her heart.
They would counsel her that a loving wife would never be a
liability to any man. And with that last thought, she switched on
the car’s engine and headed back to Santa Fe and Nick.
As long as there was hope, she would
wait for his love.
Chapter Nine
O
ver the following days Julie often wondered if her hope that
Nick might someday come to love her was nothing but a fool’s dream.
They slept together in Nick’s king-size bed, but never did they
touch. She would have been more miserable than she was, but she
kept busy, either working on her column or shopping and wrapping
Christmas gifts to mail to her friends and family back home. She
agonized over what to get Nick and finally settled on a
little-known brand of fishing reel that her father swore
by.
While Nick had not exploded at her in
anger the afternoon she returned from the luncheon with Pam and
Jim, neither did he exhibit the warm, affectionate manner he had
occasionally displayed in Cozumel.
Only once was the subject of Jim
Miller even touched on. It occurred one morning two days before
Christmas when her “Speculator” column appeared in the Sun for the
first time since her marriage. Anxiously she wai¬ed as Nick scanned
the column. Would he forbid her, in that cool, autocratic way he
had, to write any more articles, or would he go further and openly
accuse her of having an affair with her editor? She almost wished
he would show some sign of jealousy. Any emotion was better than
his indifference.
He did neither. When he finished the
column, he took a drink of coffee. His eyes studied her over the
rim of his cup, and under his close scrutiny she could only toy
with the scrambled eggs she had prepared in the Mex¬can style of
huevos rancheros.
“It’s good,” Nick said finally. “Your
column. I’ve been against Senator Follet’s strip- mining bill from
the start, but I could never have worded my protest as succinctly
as you did in your column.”
Her eyes widened at Nick’s words of
praise. When she had written the column, she had had no idea how
Nick stood on the bill. If anything, she would have supposed he was
for it. But, regardless, she had written how she honestly felt
about the bill. “Then you have no objection if I continue with my
column?”
“Not in the least. I’m pleased to see
you don’t plan to let your clever mind atrophy simply because you
have married.”
He laid aside the newspaper and said,
“Julie, several of the legislators have approached me about
throwing my hat in the ring for the governor’s race next year. How
do you feel about it?”
She looked at Nick in surprise that he
would consult her about his plans for the future. Was she to figure
in his future, or was it merely wishful thinking on her part? She
swallowed a gulp of orange juice before answering. “If that’s what
you want, then I think you should go ahead and announce your
candidacy.”
“Sheila felt the same way,” Nick said,
still watching Julie closely. “She’s volunteered her services for
my campaign committee if I decide to run.”
She looked away, unable to meet Nick’s
observant gaze. “That’s nice,” she said dryly. “You two obviously
work well together.” She laid her napkin beside her plate and rose.
“Excuse me. I—I have to get back to work on my next
column.”
Nick stood up also. “I’ll be home
early this afternoon. I thought we’d run up to San Ramon for the
weekend and celebrate Christmas Eve with my grandmother. I’d like
you to meet her. I think you two would like each other.”
The fact that Nick wanted her to spend
Christmas with him in a familylike setting offered her some hope,
though it did not lessen the hurt of hearing Sheila’s name on his
lips that morning. Her mother had telephoned, asking her to bring
Nick to visit for Christmas, but she couldn’t do that to her
parents – bring home a man who didn’t intend to stay married to her
– and had postponed the visit indefinitely.
Nevertheless, she was not going to
give up hope, and after she had prepared the first draft of the
following week’s column, she spent the rest of the afternoon
getting ready for the weekend trip to his grandmother’s house. She
wanted to look especially nice, and she chose a soft pink woolen
sweater with matching slacks to wear on the trip up to the San
Ramon ranch. Apparently she succeeded in her effort, for not too
long after they left Santa Fe behind them and began the climb up
through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains toward Taos Nick said, “You
look lovely, Julie. Not only will my grandmother approve of you,
but she’ll want to know why I didn’t marry you before I
did.”
“I wouldn’t think two days is too long
a courtship,” she said wryly.
Nick chuckled. “It must hold the state
record at least.”
The playful banter between them seemed
to set the mood for the rest of the journey, and for the first time
since Cozumel she relaxed in Nick’s presence and enjoyed the
breathtaking scenery. She had never been to Taos and found the
mountain hamlet held the same old-world charm as the central, older
section of Sante Fe. Almost all the homes and commercial buildings
were of adobe, giving the town an atmosphere of being encapsulated
there by the mountains against civilization’s progress. She could
well understand why people like Kit Carson and D. H. Lawrence had
sought out Taos as a hideaway.
Outside Taos they passed the four- and
five-story-high abode structures where Pueblo Indians had lived
since prehistoric times; then the road began to climb again to
dizzying heights before it dropped down through the sheer walls of
Cimarron Canyon and into the lush valley of the San Ramon land
grant.
The sun was hanging low over the
serrated mountains by the time Nick turned off onto a meandering
gravel drive that paralleled a narrow mountain creek. At the top of
a hill the San Ramon house came into view. The dying sunlight fell
on the old Victorian mansion, tingeing the house’s turrets and
dormer windows with a warm purple glow. “Oh, Nick, it’s beautiful,”
she breathed. “I don’t see why you don’t come here more
often.”
“I wouldn’t come here at all if it
weren’t for my grandmother,” Nick said grimly as he parked the car
in the carriage house that had been converted to a
garage.
She ached to reach out and smooth away
the harsh lines at either side of Nick’s lips, but she knew she
could not betray her feelings for him or she would become just
another one of the women he had grown tired of and eventually
discarded.
The old woman with the silver-gray
hair who stood regally on the veranda bore a great resemblance to
Nick. Her face possessed the same strong lines as his, and she
discovered that the blue-gray eyes sparkled with the same
fascinating warmth as Nick’s.
Nick hugged the old woman with obvious
affection. “Grandmother, I want you to meet my wife,
Julie.”
Elizabeth Waggoner flashed Julie a
mischievous smile. “So this is the lovely lady I read about in the
newspaper. What was it that Dee Morley wrote—‘the siren whose song
has lured Nicholas Raffer into the perilous sea of
matrimony’?”
Julie blushed. “I’ve never thought of
myself as a siren, Mrs. Waggoner.”